


Anger will carry you

by Blanquette



Series: Wild Days [7]
Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Character Study, Falling In Love, Families of Choice, M/M, One Shot, Short One Shot, Sort Of, Yoo Kihyun-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-04-03 15:34:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13999188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blanquette/pseuds/Blanquette
Summary: Kihyun, from preschool to Minhyuk to Hoseok.





	Anger will carry you

**Author's Note:**

> I am so thankful for the love you've showed for this series through comments and kudos, you guys have no idea what it means to me that you appreciate my attempts at writing. I hope this new installment won't let you guys down!
> 
> Somehow I couldn't fit Shownu in there, he really needs more love in this series lmao. Also I don't know how kids' shoe-sizes work. 
> 
> Another product of pure boredom at work, you've been warned!

1.

Kihyun has a sharp mind that translates into perfect grades and a bright future heaped upon him by enthused teachers. They look at him with puzzlement, too, as to why someone like him would associate with slackers, drop-outs, basket cases. They look at his bruised knuckles and wild eyes with worry, wondering after remnants of teenage rebellion or something deeper, maybe, a fundamental mistrust of authority and a rage that has no basis for being. The thing is, though, the more Kihyun looks at the world, the more he is dissatisfied with it.

It starts with stifling school hierarchy and duties and the smell of rotting autumn leaves squelching under the sole of his new sneakers size 9. The classroom smells like cleaning products and too many kids who don't want to be there. It unsettles him, something tight coiling in his belly that only lets go once the bell is ringing, sounding like freedom, and going home, and his bedroom door closing on the outside world.

It's still a low, humming feeling at the back of his mind then, fed by visceral boredom and the growing realization that whatever life is, it is fundamentally unfair.

He breezes through school and his teachers love him, they do, but there's something unsettling about this quiet child who looks at them with a jaded expression that shouldn't be seen on features this young. But the parents smile knowingly, Kihyun is special, they say, and the matter isn't pushed further because Kihyun is the best in his class and he's behaving. Until he isn't, pushing another child in the dust and pummeling his pudgy face with tiny fists that don't do much harm, but it's concerning, this burst of violence in someone so small, so quiet, so easy, really. There was a reason, one he doesn’t want to put in words, and he goes to sit in a quiet office once a week until the man on the other side of the desk assures that nothing is wrong, that children just act out sometimes.

The feeling is still there, though, growing in intensity, pushing thorns under his too-tight skin. He's on edge, grating thoughts and stiff shoulders, mind startlingly clear and quick to understand that he will never be satisfied, that if he can't embrace it, he'll have to fight it. He grows lean, sharp, taut as a bowstring and quicker to snap. But he's smarter, now, unloading frustrations on the deserving behind gymnasiums and dirty alleys.

 

2.

That's when he meets him, Minhyuk, tall and bright and scared and bruised, and the tightness under his skin resolves itself in white-hot anger and fierce protectiveness. When Kihyun finally leaves this city that has grown too narrow for his broad mind, he takes the boy with him, because if he can't change the past he can at least mend the future, if he can't change the world he can at least change Minhyuk's own.

That's when it happens, this gravitational pull around Kihyun, a rightful anger attracting the broken like moths to a flame. If Minhyuk is the dropout, then Changkyun must be the basket case, strange in a harmless sort of way, soft touches and loud laughs and something faraway, too, that would have him pulling at his hair in sudden bursts of anguish, jerking away from tentative touches and concerned smiles to lock himself inside his own mind. More often than not it’s Jooheon who waits him out, the slacker with too many thoughts whirring through his brilliant mind, too fast for him to grasp at them, spreading himself too thin over too many things. Both stay afloat because Kihyun is there to cut up their world into less intimidating bites they can hash and swallow. And Changkyun comes out again, and Jooheon stops drumming up an unnerving rhythm against his thigh; they fall into each other, sleeping on Kihyun’s couch when the narrowness of their own rented rooms gets too suffocating.

 

3.

It shifts slightly when Minhyuk finds someone like himself, someone tall and gangly and barely there, and that one too falls in step with their heliocentric system, a satellite of Minhyuk’s own battered planet. And Kihyun sees it, after a while, the change in Minhyuk. Brighter colors and bolder shapes, retreating shadows and faded bruises that don’t come back. His friend spills in bursts of bumbling affection and loud laughs, tentative at first, growing brazen when there are no consequences to be suffered for being too loud, too messy, too lost; too completely inadequate in a world of straight lines and flat colors.

It softens Kihyun, somehow, something uncoiling that has the stiff line of his shoulders loosen up just slightly, his anger receding if only for a beat, curling up in the empty space below his heart. It’s still there, white-hot flashes he unleashes when Hyungwon appears with splashes of yellow and purple on his face that shouldn’t be there, sheepish and dismissive, when he sees Changkyun hit the ground from the corner of his eyes, when he catches Jooheon’s empty gaze as he fails yet another class, when Minhyuk wakes up in the middle of the night, drenched in cold sweat, whimpers dying on his lips.

Kihyun is a man at war with the world itself, enraged at the brokenness of his friends, at those struggles that he never really knew himself, at his inability to fit anywhere, skin crawling, too tight around the edges. He is eternally dissatisfied, unable to engage in the path of academic successes and lucrative futures laid easy before him by his brilliant mind and his parents’ largesse.

So instead he pushes and pulls, shaping a corner of the world in something more bearable, something softer, where others can rest and he can thrive, and he’s always watchful, fiercely protective of those who come to him, doling out a sharp, fervently loyal kind of love; always intense in everything he does.

 

4.

There’s Hoseok, then. Hoseok is different, he comes from empathy, from bold strokes and soft clay, and he’s kind, always kind, Kihyun doesn’t know what to do with him. So he pushes and pulls at him, too, and Hoseok follows the motions with infinite patience and a feeling Kihyun is scared to recognize as love. Hoseok fits himself in Kihyun’s world without him really noticing, and the others take to him, too, starved for balance and kindness and compassion.

The low fire that has been scorching at his insides ever since he can remember seems to wane, then, the burning sensation under his skin replaced by something just as warm but less painful, a yearning for tenderness and soft touches and a loud laugh that echoes in his mind when he’s left alone in the refuge of his own pristine room.

Hoseok doesn’t seem to expect anything, not from any of them, content with what is freely given and acknowledging every smile, every word, every gesture thrown his way at their fair value, small traces of affection he files away like so many treasures. Changkyun’s hand clasping on his wrist when his mind spills over again, letting himself be cradled until his breath isn’t as shallow and his vision clears. Jooheon’s prideful smile when he finally passes one of his courses, excited babble and sudden tears when there’s a realization that maybe he can make it. Hyungwon letting him in, showing him the little apartment he shares with his overworked mom, that isn’t much but that is home anyway; Minhyuk sitting on his bed, half asleep, always shy around him, tentative, the hardest to reach of them all.

And Kihyun finds himself wanting to give more and more, words and touches and thoughts and everything that makes up the sum of his being. He wants to know when Hoseok will saturate, when he’ll be filled to the brim and grow tired, less candid and less kind, when the smiles will dim and he’ll grow cold. He waits for him to leave them all behind, but Hoseok never does. There’s a seemingly limitless space within him, where everything Kihyun is fits, him and his fears and his joys and his infinite anger. Him and all his satellites and the messy little world they built for themselves.

Hoseok comes from empathy, from bold strokes and soft clay, and he’s kind, always kind. Kihyun still doesn’t really know what to do with him, but maybe love will be enough, so he tries, fitting himself against Hoseok’s skin, against the slopes and curves of his body, tentative touches emboldened by shivering breaths and shy smiles, cocked eyebrows and knowing glances. It works, somehow, and it should have been obvious from the beginning, maybe, that Hoseok was enough, that he could accommodate all of them and Kihyun most of all.

He finally has a place to rest, a universe to fit him, to fit all of them, their anger and anguish and uncertainty. It’s not perfect, it never will be, but for Kihyun, it is enough.


End file.
